August 23 at HPR trying to get the suspension set up the way I liked and Blew the rear rotor.
Car was feeling great and getting fast, couldn't believe the stability difference, though I still had a hard time keeping the rear end behind me. Still very much likes to oversteer coming into the corners trail-braking. I set the rear dampers to the softest setting (had them all in the middle to start) and was excited to see how it changed and engine blew coming into turn 1 after the warm up lap!!

So I bought another engine and am rebuilding it to install in the car, then I will swap them and rebuild my original as a spare for when I blow it up next year.

Also Picked up an AEM water methanol injection kit as I feel the two massive overtemps I had last year had something to do with the failure.

Here is a little video from the first session, never got a clean lap out of traffic but was feeling very fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRxzWRaGqA

Nice lap! Are you planning on porting your new motor? It's funny that you're already preparing to blow the rotary that your currently rebuilding, lol. There's got to be a way to make rotaries more bulletproof.

Oh I feel there is. I was being very abusive to this engine, running the turbos way outside the efficiency range several overheats and shock cooling. Many improvements have been made to the cooling system and I have come to grips with needing to get faster at driving the car at stock power levels instead of cranking the waste-gate closed on the boost controller to catch a Miata and save my ego. But I think the damage was done, I had fairly high oil consumption with this car since I got it and knew the engine wasn't as healthy as I would prefer.

The engine I bought is streetported (very poorly) and I will make some attempts to clean up what the previous builder did. I will see what I think of it before deciding weather the other keg will get any port work outside of casting cleanup.

The engine I bought was rebuilt in 2004 and sat some time before the owner put it in. He couldn't get it to run right and gave up putting the car up for sale. You all may have seen it sitting by the road off of Platte in Colorado Springs with a for sale sign. A guy bought it and pulled the engine to swap in a GM 5.3 Vortec from an Isuzu Ascender!! weird I know. He pulled the 13b apart and found a stuck corner seal causing the issue so I bought it in pieces.
After going through and cleaning and measuring everything I also found that the thrust bearing cages had been pinched during the build and the side seals not properly clearanced, probably causing the corner seal to get stuck during the time it sat before install. One rotor has a gouge in it that makes me uneasy, the previous builder made an attempt to smooth the edges a bit, but I prefer to not use it. Don Walker gave me a good price on a used rotor out of his stash and sent that to me. So all the parts to finish putting it together showed up the day I had to go back on shift for 6 days. So frustrating.

Annnnd looks like Eric is having some issues with his so I'm sure he will take it down as soon as I get back on the road!! Our cars are destined to never cruise.

Dwduc wrote:Annnnd looks like Eric is having some issues with his so I'm sure he will take it down as soon as I get back on the road!! Our cars are destined to never cruise.

I'm not having issues that should take the car down, and I don't plan on putting it down for upgrades until winter. So we might get to cruise at least once this year still lol.

Also, who the hell swaps in an engine from an Isuzu? LOL

Dwduc wrote: I have come to grips with needing to get faster at driving the car at stock power levels instead of cranking the waste-gate closed on the boost controller to catch a Miata and save my ego.
Annnnd looks like Eric is having some issues with his so I'm sure he will take it down as soon as I get back on the road!! Our cars are destined to never cruise.

A stock powered FD with a good alignment and better tires is more than capable of catching and passing any weak&$$ miatas, especially on Colorado tracks.

Saul_Good wrote:A stock powered FD with a good alignment and better tires is more than capable of catching and passing any weak&$$ miatas, especially on Colorado tracks.

Yeah Yeah. And your NB should catch and pass any junky old EF hatch, but I've seen the opposite happen!

Dwduc wrote:

Saul_Good wrote:A stock powered FD with a good alignment and better tires is more than capable of catching and passing any weak&$$ miatas, especially on Colorado tracks.

Yeah Yeah. And your NB should catch and pass any junky old EF hatch, but I've seen the opposite happen!

THe FD should most definitely run down an old junky EF hatch. :P

Cold gloomy weather today slowed me down. The keg is assembled and the engine in the car is almost ready to pull. Hopefully warmer tomorrow, I am pretty certain that it won't be ready for Sundays events but I would rather not rush it. Borrowed another engine stand from a friend so that I can stand them side by side to swap the accessories over. I plan on having it ready to drop in by the end of the day tomorrow.

How did it go?

Drug my feet alot and spent time with the girlfriend. The engine is together and it is hailing out, hopefully get it dropped in tonight. Since I am waiting anyways I pulled the blown motor apart and found a totally trashed rear rotor and housing. All else looks good.
It appears that the apex seals (3 piece) wore down to almost nothing and one finally jammed and twisted out of the slot.
Goal is to be running before I go back to work Thursday morning.

Wow, that's crazy lol. Talk about epic failure.

What happened to this car? It used to see much tracktime now its disappeared....

Jason stopped by the house today with the car. He said it's been running for a week or two now, he's just taking it easy and breaking it in.

Yeah, I am terrible at keeping this thread up to date. The engine is in and running, still gaining compression. as of today has 600miles and I finally took it to redline a few times.

Here is the trashed rear rotor housing. the irons were all good.


Trashed Rear rotor. Sadly this was a "B" rotor.



Put the ported engine together that I had purchased and dropped it in the car early October. Fired it up and was not satisfied. I'm just not ready to deal with a ported motor yet. So I pulled it back out and tore it down and assembled with the non ported irons. And since it was too cold and snowy to do anything I decided to paint it all silly.



Waited until I had some good weather to start and leak check so it sat assembled until mid Feb when I dropped it in and then it froze again. So I waited for some nicer days as I wanted to run it with just water first to flush out the coolant system of any crud and assembly goo.

Fired right up off the key and was rattling and banging (I forgot to engage the clutch pull thingy) so I shut it off and popped it together and then it would not restart as all the assembly lube was now in the muffler.
A buddy came over and we pull started it behind his truck and let it run in for a good hour and smoked out the neighborhood and then shut it down and leak checked.

All seems to be good. it left a few little oil spots early on. On my driveway and on Eric's street, but it must have just been left over from what leaked out of the oil coolers and onto the chassis as it no longer is making puddles.
Still smokes pretty good on startup and cranks a little longer then I like when starting hot but it seems to be getting better as it goes. Some of the smoke could be from leaky turbos as well. I have some oil in all of my intake tubes.

Current project for it is getting this AEM Water/Methanol kit installed. The tank is really bugging me. It doesn't fit anywhere. Best option is to remove the spare and drive without it, but I don't feel great about that either.

Where are you mounting the pump?

If it's in the front you could use the washer fluid tank like I am. If it's in the rear you could try getting the European rear washer fluid tank that's twice as big as ours. Either way looks stock.